Noctua, a company well-known for the performance and acoustic characteristics of their fans (and especially for their love-it-or-hate-it brown and tan fan color scheme) has showcased their next-generation A-series fans, which took the company more than four years and 200 test designs to achieve. This is surely a case of discovering how to not make a product in 200 different ways. Noctua only had to get it right once; and it would seem they did.

Noctua are promising unparalleled performance at the A-Series noise levels. The reasons for this are varied, but one of them - perhaps the most important - comes from the fact that Noctua has ditched PBT - the plastic most commonly used in this kind of products - for a completely new compound, which the company calls Sterrox. Sterrox is a liquid crystal polymer of the same family as Kevlar. This means it has an ordered molecular structure (whereas PBT manifests a chaotic one), which means Sterrox is a much more rigid compound. This helps the fans keep their shape after spinning for long periods of time - something which happens with PBT-made fans. The chaotic structure and lower rigidity means the material deforms due to the centrifugal forces, effectively elongating the fan blades (an effect dubbed impeller creep), which means usual fan designs have to take this into account, usually by increasing the gap between the frame and the fan blades. Noctua aimed for a 0.5 mm tip clearance (much lower than the usual 1.5 or 2 mm), which results in much better air and noise performance. A narrower gap means that less air leaks through it back to the front of the fan, which allows more air to be pushed through heatsinks and radiators. And the fact that the fan blades are more rigid means they don't suffer microscopic wobbles and vibrations on the surface when spinning - hence, quieter. But how good are these new fans, really?

Well, apparently they're twice as good as Noctua's own NF-F12 fans. The company showed at Computex 2017 how a single A-series fan achieved identical temperatures to a setup which used two NF-F12 fans on the same processor, workload, and heatsink. And we thought the NF-F12 were good already.

The company is also trying to blur the line with consumer's expectations regarding static pressure and airflow measurements, saying that their new A-series, while not as good on paper as their specialized fans on either metric, can easily beat both on realistic scenarios. Noctua's Jakob Dellinger says these 120 mm will even outperform most 140 mm fans when released, and that the company will be launching an adapter so users can use these A-series fans on 140 mm fittings. Apparently, there's more to increasing a fan size than just adding an extra 20 mm to the molds. Expect these fans to cost more than Noctua's NF-F12, due to the fact that Sterrox, the compound used in their manufacturing, is four times more expensive than common PBT.
Source:
PC Gamer

Noctua stubbornly investing in engineering and product quality instead of following the market trend of investing in marketing, with "gaming" brands and RGB. Whats the point of good performance if their products are unusable, missing gaming-required edgy design guidelines?

EDIT: Every one knows, but just to make sure... Im being sarcastic here.

Air said:Noctua stubbornly investing in engineering and product quality instead of following the market trend of investing in marketing, with "gaming" brands and RGB. Whats the point of good performance if their products are unusable, missing gaming-required edgy design guidelines?

Not only they are made using the ugliest color scheme possible in the entire universe, they also make plastic out of recycled plastic containers used to carry around vegetables in the farmer's market, apparently. Look at that ugly cheap looking plastic with random lines in it. Recycled cheap plastic is the first thing that immediately jumped to my mind even though they say it's some high tech stuff. Gonna prefer a crystal clear Makrolon used on Noiseblockers. Just as high tech and looks pretty. But I guess Noctua wants to remain known after butt ugly fans. They sure are well known for that...

RejZoR said:Not only they are made using the ugliest color scheme possible in the entire universe, they also make plastic out of recycled plastic containers used to carry around vegetables in the farmer's market, apparently. Look at that ugly cheap looking plastic with random lines in it. Recycled cheap plastic is the first thing that immediately jumped to my mind even though they say it's some high tech stuff. Gonna prefer a crystal clear Makrolon used on Noiseblockers. Just as high tech and looks pretty. But I guess Noctua wants to remain known after butt ugly fans. They sure are well known for that...

I think the presented sample is exactly that: a pre-production sample. Hence the ugliness, I think...

RejZoR said:Not only they are made using the ugliest color scheme possible in the entire universe, they also make plastic out of recycled plastic containers used to carry around vegetables in the farmer's market, apparently. Look at that ugly cheap looking plastic with random lines in it.

...Sterrox is a liquid crystal polymer of the same family as Kevlar

I don't think they're using cheap recycled plastic. Quite the opposite it appears.

Air said:Noctua stubbornly investing in engineering and product quality instead of following the market trend of investing in marketing, with "gaming" brands and RGB. Whats the point of good performance if their products are unusable, missing gaming-required edgy design guidelines?

And for that exactly reason is why they are the best and along with bequiet fans my choice.

Air said:Noctua stubbornly investing in engineering and product quality instead of following the market trend of investing in marketing, with "gaming" brands and RGB. Whats the point of good performance if their products are unusable, missing gaming-required edgy design guidelines?

EDIT: Every one knows, but just to make sure... Im being sarcastic here.

And the fact that the fan blades are more rigid means they don't suffer microscopic wobbles and vibrations on the surface when spinning - hence, quieter.
This is not accurate, it could even be the opposite.

Why isn't anybody screaming or making videos about the blatant ripoff of Scythe fans?! I guess people only do that when they already hate the company, like they did with Thermaltake. These people are so objective... :rolleyes: